Looking to the future
The CERTH team continues to work on this issue. «Hydrosol created a 100-kilowatt reactor. Now we are going for 1 megawatt, in five years for 10 MW and later for 100 MW,» said Hydrosol coordinator Thanassis Constantopoulos. They have already come to an agreement with the large Almeira solar platform in Spain, where there is ample solar energy. «The system is extremely effective and economically efficient because we use solar heat which has 70 percent the output of solar energy,» Constantopoulos said. Why can’t such a project be implemented in Greece? «The cost of constructing the system is prohibitive. If there was a national energy and research strategy, we would be willing to contribute,» said the coordinator. Constantopoulos graduated from the National Technical University of Thessaloniki in 1985 and did postgraduate studies abroad. «Serious research work is being done, but it is usually the result of work done by the researchers themselves with the support of sources from abroad. The state budget doesn’t cover more than 10 percent of our laboratory’s expenses. In order to break even, we rely on the programs we bring in,» he said.
